Multi-Acked Multicast Protocol

1. A multicast communications method for a carrier sense multiple access (CSMA) network, comprising: transmitting, by a transmitter, a multicast transmission to a plurality of receivers, the said multicast transmission comprising a first start of frame (SOF) delimiter and a medium access (MAC) data payload; wherein the first SOF contains a first Frame Length (FL) field that establishes a multi-acknowledgment period; transmitting, by each of the receivers, an acknowledgement at an assigned acknowledgement time during the multi-acknowledgment period to the transmitter of the multicast transmission, wherein the assigned acknowledgment time is calculated by each of the receivers based on an offset time multiplied by a device group sequence number; and wherein the acknowledgment of a respective receiver contains a second FL field that indicates a time until a duration of the multi-acknowledgment period expires; and wherein the multicast transmission is terminated by a use of one of: a selective ACK (SACK) by one of the receivers or an expiration of the multi-acknowledgment period.

2. The method in claim 1 , where the acknowledgement is a Reverse SOF (RSOF) delimiter containing the second FL field that indicates information calculated to be equal to a time remaining in the multi-acknowledgment period set by the first FL field.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the acknowledgement contains digital information about communications quality, further comprising using the digital information about communications quality by the transmitter to determine one or more parameters to use in a common Tone Map for subsequent multicast transmissions.

4. The method of claim 1 , further comprising: transmitting a second SOF delimiter having a tone map that is optimized for a subgroup of receivers whose acknowledgment window falls at one of: after the second SOF but before a subsequent SOF, or SACK or expiration of the multi-acknowledgment period specified in the first FL field; wherein each tone map is used to optimize a communications efficiency for that subgroup of receivers.

5. The method of claim 4 , wherein a link identification (LID) is used by different SOFs to create separate subgroups of receivers.

6. The method of claim 4 , wherein the acknowledgment contains digital information about communications quality, and further comprising using the digital information about communications quality by the transmitter to group the receivers into subgroups that share a subgroup-specific Tone Map that is optimized for that subgroup; wherein the Tone Map is used by the SOF and the devices within the subgroup are assigned to acknowledgement times at one of: after the SOF and before a subsequent SOF, or SACK or expiration of the multi-acknowledgment period specified by the first FL.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein communicating using the Multi-ACKed Multicast protocol is compatible and compliant with a native communications protocol of the CSMA network.

8. The method of claim 7 , wherein the Multi-ACKed Multicast protocol is compatible and compliant because it does not affect interoperability with a non-participating group receivers in the CSMA network that are using the native communications protocol.

9. The method of claim 7 , wherein the Multi-ACKed Multicast protocol is compatible and compliant because it may be terminated without affecting interoperability of any device in the CSMA network that is using the native communications protocol.

10. The method of claim 4 , further comprising: discontinuing the multicast transmission in favor of a native distribution protocol method when the transmitter determines that the performance of the network is not as effective as a native protocol transmission.

11. The method of claim 10 , wherein the native distribution protocol method is unicast.